Kyle Marbut
from Black Swan Theory

Our teacher lied to us about the heart. In kindergarten, they split
us into pairs. Each shared a squid fresh from the fishmonger’s bucket.
One of us held the head, the other the tentacles. And we pulled.
We were ordered to spill blueblooded viscera onto a paper plate, to
root through this with toothpicks, to pierce the ink sac between the
liver and the gill. Black spell pooling, they told us to write our
names and draw our hearts. Like this, they said, their fingers curved,
the tips touching. Like this, we drew it wrong. Still, now, I reduce
the world to gestures, hands folded, interrupting the light. Cast
onto the wall: rabbit, dog, panther, dove, frozen apple, blooming
willow, rapture, gender, awe—what I held only as shadow, not as
they are. I can’t name them all.

*

Found a drawer in the live oak out back filled with love
letters and dead finches. The finches are addressed to
sleeping tulips; they wear postage stamps folded into
little crowns. I deliver them, to the flowerbeds. Winter
and not a world in sight. We hurtle through space all
day and night and still people expect a timely delivery,
expect answers like we’re anybody. The letters,
addressed to “Dear,” all say “I wish you would.”

*

I walked in on my boyfriend edging to a compilation
of volcanic eruptions. We would never be so gauche,
he says, oozing nacre. We know truer pleasure in
restraint. But me, I’m not so sure, having just
returned from another bender, an entire orchard
stripped of its peaches to sate the vague blue ache
rising in my briefs. The empirical moment isn’t doing
it for me anymore, tracking each repressed cumshot
in strict notation in our overflowing ledger. Soon I’ll
start swallowing blossoms before they even fruit just
to taste a little death. He can’t even say sex without
blushing, mutters cock like a doctor asking after a
growth before locking his back in its cage. I could
finger his euphemism so politely. I would cough up
the swallowed key, unclasp the plastic latch, spill
glitter on his sheets, spend all night cramming the
light back inside me. I would bend over, if he’d let me
say please. In this heat, I stick to everything I touch.